While a sizeable amount of media content continues to be consumed by viewers and listeners “live” (e.g., as the media content is being received from a media content source by way of terrestrial antenna broadcast, direct satellite broadcast, Internet streaming, and so on), some significant volume of media content is recorded or stored for subsequent viewing, often after first being broadcast or otherwise presented to one or more other viewers. Such media content may be received and stored either locally (e.g., on a personal video recorder (PVR) or digital video recorder (DVR), on a magnetic or optical disk drive, on a flash drive, or the like), or remotely (e.g., on a server, database, or other data storage device or system accessible via a communication network).
Oftentimes, an item of media content (e.g., a movie, television episode, news program, sporting event, or the like) includes one or more portions (e.g., advertisements during television shows, timeouts and intermissions during sports, sections of potentially objectionable content during movies, and so on) that at least some viewers may desire to skip while playing back the media content item. In other cases, a media content item includes one or more portions exceptionally dramatic movie scenes, exciting sports plays, and the like) that some viewers especially enjoy.